ELAN BOASTS the highest revenue per employee in the industry, chairman Bob Ingram told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Dublin yesterday.

Mr Ingram was addressing questions from shareholders about the progress of the company towards bottom line profitability.

Drawing a comparison between Elan in past, more turbulent years and the company of today, he said the current business was much more focused.

“This is a company that has a clear mission, a logical mission, given its strengths,” he said. “It has the highest revenue per employee in the industry and we will become profitable in direct proportion to the progress of our science.”

It also emerged that staff at Elan have been a given a stake in the the company’s future.

Chief executive Kelly Martin said that last year, for the first time, every staff member in the company received either stock options or restricted shares.

The comments came as he answered questions from shareholder John Connolly, who was critical of a number of areas of the company, including share payments to directors.

Mr Martin said somewhere between 95 and 98 per cent of shares issued to company insiders went to staff rather than directors.

Most shareholders were more positive, including the father of Dr Natalie Murphy, an Irish multiple sclerosis patient, who has contracted the serious side effect of the company’s Tysabri drug, PML.

At what was a sparsely attended annual meeting in Dublin, all the company’s existing board members were re-elected to their positions.

There was little opposition to any of the appointments, with the 10.5 per cent vote against the re-election of non- executive Kyran McLaughlin, deputy chairman of Davy Stockbrokers, being the highest.

There was little discussion about the position of Mr Martin, who had originally intended to step down this month.